By Victor Davis Hanson
After listening to the State of the Union address, Americans know why the latest Reuters poll has Joe Biden at 41 percent approval.
Vice President Kamala Harris polls even lower—despite the obsequious efforts of the most biased media in history that has, in effect, merged with the Democratic Party.
The nation was reminded again why only 37 percent of Biden’s own party want him to run again.
Only a quarter of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction under his leadership.
Given all that, what could a president possibly tell a nation when he entered office inheriting a 1.4 percent inflation rate only to spike it to 7 percent? How did Americans’ 30-year mortgages of 2.7 percent soar to 6.5 percent in less than two years?
How does a president explain that eggs climbed to $7 a dozen, or a thin steak hit $15 a pound, or a sheet of plywood reached $95?
How does a president explain to Americans that gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when he took office and, even after draining the strategic petroleum reserve, it is still $3.50 a gallon—and recently spiked at $5 a gallon in many states.
Can Joe Biden explain why once affordable, or even cheap natural gas more than tripled in price in less than a year?
What can a president say when in his first two years, over 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States—all illegally across a nonexistent border?
How could Biden explain the humiliation in Afghanistan? The draining of our arsenal of key weaponry? Or the inability to take down a communist Chinese spy balloon when it first brazenly floated above America—photographing military bases and missile sites as it crossed the entire United States with impunity?
We know the answers to all these questions.
Joe Biden simply did on Tuesday in his state of the union address what he always does: misinform, ignore, and attack!
Misinform. After sending inflation, energy, and interest rates to astronomical rates, and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit, Biden declares that he “lowered” these indices that remain far higher than they were when he entered office.
He brags about a low unemployment rate. But Biden never discloses the better indicator of the labor participation rate that has declined under his tenure—or the fact he inherited a growing economy naturally rebounding on autopilot from a disastrous two-year COVID lockdown.
Ignore. Consider what he will never mention. China just violated international law and U.S. airspace. How did Beijing assume rightly that they so easily could get away with it?
There is no southern border. Joe Biden destroyed it.
He greenlighted over 5 million illegal aliens to enter the United States without audit or legality—even as smuggled Mexican drugs kill 100,000 Americans each year.
He never will concede he stopped the building of the wall. He omits that he demonized innocent border patrol officers. He nullified the immigration laws he swore to uphold.
Biden ignores the $4 trillion he has borrowed in just two years to inflate the national debt, now on its way to over $32 trillion this year. The middle class has bled 20-30 percent of their 401k retirement plans representing years’ worth of lost hard-earned savings.